Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 16, 1991 TAG: 9104160470
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DETROIT LENGTH: Medium
A 21-year-old chimpanzee gave birth to one female on April 8, and then, startling experts, delivered a second female a half-hour later.
Twins occur about once in every 100,000 chimpanzee births, zoo spokeswoman Khadejah Shelby said Monday.
"We're quite excited about it. There has never been any known instance of survival of twins in captivity or wild," she said. "Twins are rare, and survival is known to be zero."
The Detroit twins are healthy. The challenge to their survival is the need to share their mother.
A chimpanzee mother needs her arms and legs to walk and can't hold her newborn, so the offspring clutches her fur. But there's little mobility when she has two hanging on, and there's seldom enough milk for both, Shelby said.
The zoo assigned the firstborn to a 24-hour team of seven handlers who feed the chimp human infant formula.
"We're really learning from the mother, even buying fake fur that the keepers wear so the baby will not bond to humans, but will know fur and will be able to recognize her mother," Shelby said.
The other chimp twin will stay with her mother. In four to six months the human-raised chimpanzee will be reintroduced to the others, Shelby said.
"Chimps are very social animals. There's a lot of grooming and touching," Shelby said. "The sooner we're able to get them back together, the better it will be for all of them."
Shelby said she doesn't know if other zoos have successfully hand-reared baby chimps.
The zoo has 16 chimps, two of them adult males. Tests are under way to determine which is the father.
The zoo doesn't name its animals.
by CNB